Ballots to remain uncounted in MI and Stein blocked in Philly. Guest: Election integrity, law expert Paul Lehto says this proves 'only option is to get it right on Election Night'. Also: Trump taps climate denier, fossil-fuel tool for EPA...

AP --- yes, AP --- is now reporting the just released audit information obtained from Palm Beach County, Florida's 2004 Election. And the picture of the Sequoia paperless touch-screen voting machines used that night is not pretty. The information was obtained and released tonight by BlackBoxVoting.org...

BlackBoxVoting.org, which describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens group, said it found 70,000 instances in Palm Beach County of cards getting stuck in the paperless ATM-like machines and that the computers logged about 100,000 errors, including memory failures.

Also, the hard drives crashed on some of the machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, some machines apparently had to be rebooted over and over, and 1,475 re-calibrations were performed on Election Day on more than 4,300 units, Harris said. Re-calibrations are done when a machine is malfunctioning, she said.

The election officials in Palm Beach, however, say there are perfectly good reasons that their own election audit tapes showed thousands of errors and other anomolies...and, of course, they blame the victims...

Palm Beach County election officials said the BlackBoxVoting.com findings are flawed, and they blamed most of the errors on voters not following proper procedures.

"Their results are noteworthy for consideration, but in a majority of instances they can be explained," said Arthur Anderson, the county's elections supervisor. "All of these circumstances are valid reasons for concern, but they do not on face value substantiate that the machines are not reliable."

Meanwhile, the folks from Sequoia Voting Systems, who make the apparently error-prone machines in question, say "all is well"...

Sequoia spokeswoman Michelle Shafer disputed the findings, saying the company's machines worked properly. Sequoia's machines are used in five Florida counties and in 21 states.

"There was a fine election in November 2004," Shafer said.

That "fine election", however, apparently seems to have included votes cast prior to the start of early elections...

Harris said one machine showed that 112 votes were cast on Oct. 16, two days before the start of early voting, a possible sign of tampering. She said the group found evidence of tampering on more than 30 machines in the county.

Records are being turned over the the Palm Beach County office of the FBI Friday morning at 9:00 a.m.

The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Black Box Voting had to sue former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election. (NOTE: Yes, that Theresa LePore..."Butterfly Ballot" LePore, "Democrat" in 2000 now Republican LePore)

Several dozen voting machines with votes for the Nov. 2, 2004 election cast on dates like Oct. 16, 15, 19, 13, 25, 28 2004 and one tape dated in 2010. These machines did not contain any votes date-stamped on Nov. 2, 2004.

In addition to the date discrepancies, most had incorrect polling times, with votes appearing throughout the wee hours of the night.

The evidence indicates that someone accessed the computers after the [Logic & Accuracy tests]and before the election, and that this access caused a change in the machine's reporting functions, at least for date and time. Such access would take a high degree of inside access.

One machine was powered down 128 times during the election.

Sequoia touch-screens are also used in Pinellas County (FL), Riverside, San Bernardino and Santa Clara countis (CA), New Mexico, New Jersey, and formerly in Snohomish County (WA). (NOTE: We should have more soon on the Sequoia machines in Snohomish County, WA, where apparently the machines are not yet "formerly" in use, but still to be used through September of 2006, according to the current lawsuit by Paul Lehto and John Wells against Snohomish and Sequoia up there. As we say, more on that soon.)

See BBV for more anomolies, details and explanations on all of the above.

The amazing Bev Harris strikes again! 2010? Who would have thought that 'Crazy Bev' would be the one to discover that Sequoia's secretly developed the ability to travel through time? That's the only logical conclusion based on the available evidence... after all, it allegedly says '2010' right on the tape and we've somehow managed to rule out the possibility that someone just set the clock wrong.

I'm calling my secret tree-hugging team of Canadian engineers first thing in the morning and ordering them figure out a way to bolt a temporal flux capacitor onto every TSx. If Sequoia has time travel then I want it too, dammit.

(Also I can't believe Bev made it through an entire article without even once using the word "stunning". Or misusing "flaunt" when she clearly means "flout". She's clearly losing her touch. At least she threw in a patented Really Big Number ™. At least 100,000 errors in the audit log! What the heck, why not make it a billion? It's not like anyone's going to actually bother to check the facts. )

"Fine election" is code for "We really don't want to talk about how many votes were lost." It reminds me of my days as a broker; whenever somebody in management was canned, to avoid embarrassing him and the firm, they'd say, "He's a fine person; he stepped down to pursue other opportunities."

Nobody ever got fired. And no election was ever rigged. Not as long as everything was "fine."

It is nice AP picked up the story. It would be nicer if CBS and CNN did. Or the NYT and WaPo. If any of them do, it would be nice--but inadequate. It seems to me the counties who use these machines would be contacted directly in ads run in their local papers for the benefit of local elections officials. Simple, paid notices in local papers. When was the last time something like that was organized?

Does anybody wonder why I want the voter to get a ballot image receipt that's legally binding toward a voter getting his vote corrected if it's recorded incorrectly, and that I want the elections people to have to post them by the ballots ID number so you can check? And get it corrected if it's wrong? It's been what, 1&1/4 years to dig this stuff up, more than a year and a month since the electors were certified? The feedback/verification on this needs to much more immediate.

It's probably not so much the MSM "waking up", as it is they may be "getting tired" of Bush. All the stuff on the blogs is known to them, and has been. Ask yourself, why now? Why bring this election stuff up now, more than a year after the fact? Why did Lou Dobbs bring up business ties between the Bushes and UAE a couple nights ago? The Bush Family has been involved in shady deals for several decades. The MSM is just now finding this out? Not really. If they're just now CHOOSING to talk about it, it probably indicates a shift in the wind.

If Shado is right, then I am more than a little disappointed in the media. I suppose I should be thankful the media is making a choice , but it shouldn't be because it is choice that suits me personally. Honestly, I do not recall the media being so hapless and unresponsive and non-competitive in the 1970's as they are now. Is my recollection all that wrong?

Since the MSM is now owned and 1000-times more attuned to being a profit center than fact-purveyor, perhaps my recollection is right.

Every time anyone is able to obtain actual copies of records from elections held on electronic voting equipment, the story is repeated as if from a script:
The local officials state immediately after the election that all went well;
The vendors parrot that message;
When documents are finally forthcoming, normally months later, we find major errors, failures, and questionable actions;
The vendors and election officials blame the voters and poll workers, but never the equipment;
The problems would not have changed the outcome.
Conspiracy or coincidence?
It has happened in Maryland, Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Washington, California, etc.
When will citizens have had their fill of being lied to and demand accountability.

Bilge - The quote I used in the article above, "Records are being turned over the the Palm Beach County office of the FBI Friday morning at 9:00 a.m." was taken directly from BBV's article on the matter (linked in the story) last night. Looks like that text may have been removed, though I don't see any explanation as to why.

Additionally, a BBV person confirmed that similar information to me via Email. Beyond that, I'll try to look into why that point seems to have been removed from the web page.

Big Dan - Lemme see what I can do to get some of this up onto Huff Po.

I think Shado has identified what might be called the "weak president" phenomenon. As long as Bush is under fire from his own party (on NSA spying, Abramoff/DeLay/Ney and now the port deal), the media are less afraid to join in the criticism. Instead of being in a powerful position where it can deny access for negative stories, the White House needs the media to get its own spin out. In other words, the balance of power has shifted.

Blowing the cover off the 2004 election is another matter. That has implications for the financial markets, the currency markets, our credibility in the world (already low), and for advertisers. Shado is right that the major papers and TV networks know the election was rigged; but as Seymour Hersh said, "It's too big a story to tell." Voluntarily, that is.

That's why the class-action suits against Diebold, and Clint Curtis' campaign for Congress, are so promising. The media won't have a choice but to cover what comes out. Their capacity to censor the story vanishes. They can't prevent the discovery process and they can't silence Clint.

Thank you Brad, for your assistance in getting this very important story out.

As you know, I've been researching the trolls who are behind the continuing campaign to maligh Bev Harris for over a year now, and have written a series of diaries at Kos that document undeniable proof of a coordinated campaign.

Brad, I guess I get upset when something this big isn't trumpeted in unison on all progressive blogs. Not only does it upset me, but it is shocking. It happens a bit too much, the non-unity of progressives. The rightwingers are always in unison---albeit one "fucked-up" unison, but at least they're always together---again, albeit "fucked-up" and together. At least I admire them for their unity.

Walden O'Dell:" I know Brad just wrote that it uses wireless infrared communications, but the fact is that he's just wrong."

Prove it Walden. Lets see you prove these "machines" have no infra-red ports on them when I have personal photographs that have been taken of their outsides/insides and also testimony from a Jeff Fsher....

Come now Mr. O'Dell, surely you can explain that one....Did you know the constitution specifically forbids votes to be counted in secret, and that your *entire line of machines* counts votes in secret with no oversight? And proned to errors, malfunctions and convenient "flipping" of the votes?

You say the FEC does not ban interpreted code....yet the FEC didn't write the standards. That was the EAC.....And I can prove to you, in the law, Mr. O'Dell that those EAC standards say specifically interpreted code is ILLEGAL.

Reality check time: Any competent attorney can stall any kind of action for a greater length of time than is available before election time. Republicans innately understand this, while Democrats, despite legions of trial attornies, apparently don't, and it hurts us.

Please, use the tamper-proof paper ballots that every state in the union already has on hand and Vote Absentee.

Machines are easily rigged, but the people at Registrar's offices across the nation are staffed by neighbors, friends, family, coworkers, and fellow citizens whom overwhelmingly possess one vital characteristic: Honesty.

John Dean from Santa Ana! I'm glad you've stopped by. I wanted to contact you but I couldn't find your diaries on kos earlier today. Between this Wally O'Sophistry fella here and Bev's diary on dkos being single-handedly shut down by a regular poster and his gang there, I've been interested in seeing your take on it.

Care to defend yourself? How about defending these "errors" in court. You claim they did not happen, Mr. O'Dell. I've passed this on to many highly qualified attornies. According to the evidence these vote miscounts did in fact happen.

That's enough that you're now on record for alleged perjury to multiple media personalities....so how much did the neocons give you again? Your little party is over.

""Their results are noteworthy for consideration, but in a majority of instances they can be explained," said Arthur Anderson, the county's elections supervisor."

Anyone know what Arthur Anderson's explanation was? What kind of crap is "they can be explained"...this is more stonewalling...what IS your explanation, Mr. Anderson??? Does anyone out there know Mr. Anderson's explanation, or did he just SAY THE WORDS, "they can be explained"?

If they can be explained, Bev Harris should know of these explanations, and we'd all like to hear from Bev Harris what Mr. Anderson's explanation is, for the 100,000 errors. Or is this just more bullshit from Mr. Anderson? My bullshit detector is going off!

Mr. Anderson: Why did blackboxvoting have to sue in court to get these records, can you please answer that? For those idiots out there, the fact that BBV had to sue to rightfully acquire these records, and the courts backed them, proves they're hiding something. If they weren't hiding anything, they would've freely given BBV the records 9 months ago. What's your answer to that question? If BBV lost, would you have come out and said, "There's nothing to see anyway. BBV would've found that there was nothing wrong with the records."

February 22, 2006 and AP is jumping all over this story. Is this is the epitome of better late than never??? (Wink at these fckers). In the last days of George W. Bushit's 2nd term or if the robots in his Congressional Party have no choice but to impeach, you might hear about the Ohio Free Press and the Green Party massive evidence of the STOLEN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION AND BOGUS RECOUNT IN OHIO. With the recent changes that took place in Ohio, a recount will not even be POSSIBLE in the next RIGGED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION under the SAME CIRCUMSTANCES.

Have all you guys checked out the March issue of Harper's magazine? The editor emeritus Lewis Lapham calls outright for Bush's impeachment. The editorial is lacerating. Buy it, read it, if for literary pleasure alone.

the main problem seems to be that the "masses" think anything "true" is on TV ,Q.E.D. if its not on TV its a lie and the "net" ...

I was talking to my father in-law last night and he brought up 911 ,to which I said I didn't believe the truth is known as to who was behind it.So asked him to look at three pictures of WTC7 and to explain how they could fit the "Official story" (pictures here ,WTC 7 example).His come back was that "its been proven on TV" and that I was wrong to trust anything I read on the "net" because everybody knows its full of lies.
I've come across this type of thinking many times and am at a lost as to how to overcome it and present new information to the discussion.This applies equally to "election fraud" ,"Iraq" or 911.

I invite you to try to use your "exscuses" in court, Mr. O'Dell as that's what the public court is about. On the other hand, we have verified proof of you lying to MULTIPLE ELECTION CENTERS in Arizona, and now nationwide, about the Infra-Red ports and their accessibility:http://www.bbvforums.org.../messages/1954/1954.html

Further I even have verified pictures from several individuals, and a whistle blower that the infra red ports are located on these machines. These documents are in the process of being handed over.

This is an argument you can no longer walk away from. We can prove, conclusively in COURT that YOUR MACHINES did not pass the required certification and further have proven insider access to the memory cards, therefore should be removed permanently.

First they fight you, then you win. Looks like we're winning O'dell. You are running out of exscuses faster than the neocons can spin them up; or you wouldn't be posting here under an assumed name.

Doug: LINK TV and FSTV (free speech tv) are the 2 best news channels, and the ONLY good news channels. Here here! Doug! I thought I was the only one watching them. Have you seen any politicians on their channels? No. They do not accept federal money and they do not accept corporate money, and have no commercials. It's like a whole different world. And you feel good after watching the real news. Not frustrated.

""Their results are noteworthy for consideration, but in a majority of instances they can be explained," said Arthur Anderson, the county's elections supervisor."

In case you didn't notice, the "disinformation" has just begun.

Notice both of these assinine quotes are unchallenged by whoever asked them.

"Ms. Shaffer, on what do you base your statement that the voting went fine? Bev Harris is basing her statements on examination of the released audit records, which, by the way, Florida officials were trying to stop the release of in court. Ms. Shaffer, what's your answer?"

Replace "Ms. Shaffer" with "Mr. Anderson", and ask the same question. "You are saying words in the media, but on what facts are you basing those words? Bev Harris is just repeating what's on the audit records. You're just saying shit..."

Sadly, in the MSM, you will see the "Shaffer's" and "Anderson's" quoted more, even though they have no basis to back up what they are saying. This is what's wrong with the MSM. They will give people like that an unchallenged mass forum to just say shit/lies, on TV, unchallenged, totally unchallenged.

As you might have noticed, DHinMI, Avila, tlh lib, and the other trolls at Daily Kos, have had their asses kicked in the past 24 hours in Bev's diary.

Now then, it's way to early to claim victory - after all, they're trolls, and they do what they do regardless of whether they get their butts kicked or not, but the the tide has most certainly turned, and I can imagine them talking this very minute in some secret chat room, wondering what their next move ought to be.

I checked you out a little before this response btw - and you really nailed it once when you talked about phony grassroot sites springing up (you worded it differently but that's the gist) - there are quite a few phony BBV sites as well, and it makes it hard for the unlearned to determine facts from noise sometimes...but the tide is turning now, and more and more know the facts.

I'm sure DHinMI, Avila, tlh lib (all who trolled my series of diaries at one point or another), David Allen, Roxanne Jekot aka BoredtoDeath, Vgerbert, and others, are in shock right now regarding the army of folks that came in to that diary and posted in support of Bev. I called in every marker I had, but a lot of folks were engaging independent of my own efforts to get the truth out, and I am proud of each and every one of them for standing up to these bullies.

Let's put this in perspective too. Ohio's Ken Blackwell threw out voter registrations for being on the wrong paperweight. Now, 100,000 errors in the actual election are OK??? I don't care what the errors were! If Blackwell threw out registrations because of the wrong paperweight!!!

Just pointing out hypocrisy. Now 100,000 MAJOR errors IN ONE COUNTY BY THE WAY, are nothing, but registrations on .0000001% of the required paperweight GET THROWN OUT!!!

It was truly unfortunate that that diary was hi-jacked by a handful of people when it was on the top of the recommended diaries list for quite some time.

I don't mind some polite dissent, but DHinMI (as usual) went completely overboard.

And KOS himself gave DHinMI's first obnoxious comment a "4" rating!!

I scratch my head over there sometimes.

Now, what's the deal with Avila saying that BH is using BBV.org for her own purposes? What's happened with BH calling Rhandi Rhodes? Why such the controversy with BH? I'm sort of in the dark here.
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What one has to keep in mind is that Daily Kos is an apparatus of the Democratic Party. Any subject that does not directly benefit the party will not be looked upon kindly, this is stated fact.

Electronic voting is an issue that doesn't have a nice PR appeal to it, and is perceived as something that will make Democrats look like sore losers, "tin-foil hat wearers," and "fraudsters". Therefore there is rarely the robust discussion that the issue demands, except to say 'look, we've taken a stand on this' further down the road.

One particular comment from DHinMI cries 'strawman!' when presented with the idea that kos has not been activist enough on this issue. 'Look at his post a week before the election' is his defense. I can't say I've read every diary in the past two years, but if there was a concerted effort to debate electronic voting, I would have noticed. There has not been.

Notice how they bring up every stale piece of information they can to steer the discourse. They want to drag the debate back to 2004, which is a dead end because no one can know conclusively what happened. The issue is no longer what happened in 2004, but what is going to happen in 2006 and 2008.

The large amount of errors shown in these machines during tests as well as historic data serve as a springboard for banning their use until more secure measures are put into place. A statement one week before the election decrying electronic voting machines might not be as effective.

It's interesting to note that Bev Harris' intent to be non-partisan in getting an honest, accurate, voting system into place for America is being so horribly skewed into a direct attack on the right wing.

Inadvertently, It seems to have turned out that way, in spite of her willingness to equally attack any questionable vote that favored non-Republicans.

::::::::::::::
(I would like to suggest to the good people of The Brad Blog that they copy my below statement and link to Clint Curtis' website, and use it as your signature on the various blogs that you may visit. Let's bring as much attention to this campaign as we possibly can. It's going to be a tough, very important battle!)

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead

Isn't it amazing that nobody in the media ever connects the dots on election fraud?

A test is taken in Leon County, Florida by Ion Soncho. It shows a Diebold machine can be easily hacked with a simple insertion, and votes flipped.

Two months later Bev Harris discovers possibly 100,000 missing votes from 2004 in one Florida county alone. Meanwhile vote totals from 2004 in other states are called into question...Alaska, Arizona, California, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina. Did I leave any out? Aren't these the tip of the iceberg, anyway?

All these disputes become individual left vs. right or he said/she said arguments, isolated from their larger context. John Kerry won the popular vote by 3 percent nationwide in exit polls. for God's sake! Is this rocket science?

I disagree with BVAC, who says the issue is no longer what happened in 2004. Until people fully recognize that John Kerry won the 2004 election, meaningful reform won't happen. Why so? After Al Gore won in 2000 and was denied the White House, the only reform we got was HAVA...which left the same crooked machines in the same crooked state and in the same crooked hands.

But these crooked machines did make it easier for blind people to vote. That's a relief.

I did a 20-minute interview by phone on Thursday. The appointment with the agent was set for 9 a.m. Friday morning. She called me and asked to reschedule due to an amber alert.

The files we are providing are not the poll tapes, although if it gets to that, I would imagine they'll go get those from Palm Beach --- I doubt it will get that far.

We are providing the logs, which have more detail than the poll tapes. We also have electronic copies of the matching poll tapes which confirm the logs, and we'll provide those.

I had posted that story late, late late at night and had written it hastily. The lead paragraph had the info about the FBI, I think it was the lead sentence. About a half hour later, I redid the lead paragraph, because the point of the story wasn't FBI, that was downstory information. It remains downstory that the information is being turned over to authorities.

I kept the word "authorities" instead of FBI because these matters are cross-jurisdictional by nature. This information can be turned over to any combination of the following:

As I said to the news reporters covering this, from time to time Black Box Voting comes into possession of some information that properly must be given over to authorities. We are not a law enforcement agency and we cannot make the final determination as to whether something should be prosecuted, nor do we have the ability to put records on lockdown or do law enforcement-style interviews of key witnesses.

The proper procedure is to turn the information over.

That being said, the priorities of law enforcement are not the same as the priorities of the voting integrity community. They have a limited number of people to do an overload of investigations, ranging from bank fraud to embezzlement to computer hacking to bank robbery to, as in the case of the FBI agent, amber alerts.

Whether a set of logs documenting "cast vote" entries two weeks before an election and in the middle of the night, for an election two years ago, when it's too late for a recount or contest, will ever rise to the top of that priority list is an open question.

It could, under the theory that another election is coming up and it needs to be determined whether a crime was committed in the past election by the people running the current one. It could, under the theory that if unauthorized information was introduced into a computer system, that constitutes a computer crime, but we cannot prove that unauthorized information was entered in, just that the vote logs contain incorrect information, at least as to time and date, that cannot be readily explained as "natural causes". It could, if the secretary of state was investigating the security and accuracy of voting systems, which comes under his/her purview.

Sorry I wasn't clear. Sleep deprivation does that to me, and I'm not the greatest writer in the world anyway.

Regarding the courts: We filed suit against Palm Beach County and Theresa LePore on Nov. 29, 2004 to get the records after she refused to provide them. Then Theresa LePore was replaced (she became the "Election Fraud investigator" for Palm Beach County, LOL, and I'm not kidding). She was replaced by Arthur Anderson.

We met privately with Arthur Anderson, and over the course of the next couple months, he dropped the opposition to the records production. Ultimately the case was settled out of court, with Palm Beach County capitulating.

And I also didn't make clear the status of the law enforcement stuff --- we will deal with that on Monday, and I have arranged to do so electronically and on the phone since I will be in Washington on that day, going to another state shortly.

Because of the delay --- I had hoped to ask for guidelines on the protocol of what to release publicly after the agent looked over the records --- at any rate, we've decided to go ahead and release the stuff publicly so everyone can look at it and come to their own conclusions.

I felt the media coverage in Florida was very good. The Palm Beach Post has a reporter, George Bennett, who has always been an independent spirit --- I like him because he examines the information we provide very carefully, very intelligently, and has often caught a weakness in my own information. He reports both sides, and does that rare thing --- asks follow up questions, which are the whole name of the game. Sometimes his articles seem to favor the officials in Palm Beach, sometimes the activists score a point. My impression of that reporter is that he looks into things and doesn't have a handler or an agenda.

Kevin Connolly of the Orlando Sun Sentinel has also done good coverage, though he tends to be in a big hurry and doesn't do his homework as diligently as Bennett. Both Bennett and Connolly went to the raw documents on BlackBoxVoting.org. Bennett surprised me at his thoroughness, because he was able to identify the date and time of the L&A test from the logs --- it's not that hard to see, but it does require really looking at them. Connolly reported the idiotic statement of Deanie Lowe (Volusia County) that the wrong date on the poll tape wasn't a date --- he went an looked at the image of the poll tape on our site, which is good, but he should have taken a couple minutes to click the poll tapes that have no anomalies. That would have quickly proven that Deanie Lowe had misinformed him, and that should have been printed.

These guys write on deadline. The news media doesn't give them a week to put a story to bed, it's more like 24 hours, or sometimes 3-4 hours or even less. I'm sure Brad can relate to this, as I can --- you can only personally verify so much information on a tight deadline, and researching so you can have the right followup questions ready is a bitch.

The Associated Press did a great job, except that they clipped and cut my statement on the potential impact on the presidential so I was uncomfortable with it. I had given them a number of qualifiers --- if A, B, C, D hold true, and we haven't completed work on C and D, it could throw the results in question. He just reported "it could throw the results in question" without adding the qualifiers. That's my fault. They only have a limited number of words they can put in, and the qualifiers are what's going to get cut, so next time I have to get the qualifiers in the main sentence in a briefer way.

The Washington Post picked up the AP story, which surprised me. CNN radio also covered this. Florida TV, the local Fox channel, channel 12, made this their lead story and they are continuing to follow up. By the way, the local Fox affiliates are often quite good. The San Diego Fox affiliate does excellent work, and once actually aired the video of the chimp hacking Diebold!

There was another reporter, intent of writing a hit piece, Anthony Man. He writes for the Palm Beach area Sun Sentinel, likes to cover gossip. He was trying diligently to find something bad to say. I was surprised that I was pleased with his article, though.

The advantage that some of the "opposition-friendly" reporters have is that they can get official quotes from a lot of officials and IT people who won't talk to the others. It's great to get that stuff on record, and several useful quotes from LePore and the Palm Beach County staff were obtained by Anthony Man.

Brad Friedman did a GREAT job covering this story, and I give his leadership some of the credit for the massive amount of blogging this story has received.

That was information told to me by two producers, one for CBS and one for ABC, and the date of that was Nov. 2004.

I don't think that still applies. There are many in the media that are now covering the facts on this, and that is why it is so important for citizens to gather EVIDENCE in the form of documents, testimony, video and tape recordings, because when you provide that, it stands a decent chance of getting coverage.

To learn how to gather the right kinds of evidence, individualized to your location, email crew@blackboxvoting.org. We'll work one on one with you. Allow a few days for response, since this is personalized and not an automated process.

Yes. The man who said the anomalies you found "can be explained." Has he explained them? Or did he jus SAY, "they can be explained."? Whoever this guy is, he is directly attacking your finding, by saying that.

Since Mr. Anderson said the anomalies can be explained, I just want to know his explanation, that's all. What is it? If he goes out of his way to say this in the news, I want to know his explanation. Did I miss it? Maybe he did offer explanations. I can't find them. If he didn't, why did he say your findings could be explained? Just wondering...I want to know his explanation for the anomalies you found. Inquiring minds want to know!!!

If you could offer some input to the differing viewpoints between Robert Lockwood Mills and myself, would your position be that the irregularities of 2004 need more attention in so far as to prove deliberate, organized election fraud occured, as a catalyst for election reform? Or should the irregularities, along with the well-documented flaws in the electronic voting machines serve as the foundation for getting the current machines out and replacing them with more secure machines, or paper ballots?

There was a comment at dKos from the mendacious ignoramus DHinMI about "who was auditing your results" that I really, really wanted to be able to shoot back "The FBI, that good enough for ya?" but I couldn't get confirmation of that.

Once your findings and materials do get turned over to the various authorities, can you post a note about who received them and when?

"Usage Note: Flaunt as a transitive verb means “to exhibit ostentatiously”: She flaunted her wealth. To flout is “to show contempt for”: She flouted the proprieties. For some time now flaunt has been used in the sense “to show contempt for,” even by educated users of English. This usage is still widely seen as erroneous and is best avoided."

So, when the entire country (for as long as I've been alive) uses a word in a certian context, it's not ok for someone else to do it? Ah.. I get it.. the "I know this word and you don't, therefore I'm smarter, therefore my opinion is right", narcissistic aspect of your post kicks in.. Sorry, thought you might actually want to contribute to the POINT.. You kind of did when you eluded to Bev "making it up", yet you have no evidence to support that, and in FACT, the quotes from the Florida people DENY your claim by saying "most of those errors are no big deal".. so, the NUMBER of errors is never questioned, just dismissed by the powers that be [i.e. hold the power of their offices and hope to use that to bash our Democracy dead].

Bilge: I will be happy to post information about which agencies have received the information and when, along with which branch office the information was provided to.

That being said, you can't really say "the FBI is investigating it" unless they decide to develop an active investigation based on the preliminary interviews & files provided. For the reasons abovementioned, I think that is very iffy, and that is not a criticism of the FBI or other law enforcement agencies. They have to make choices and set priorities, and I'm sure that involves some difficult choices.

Also, although of course I know the name of the specific agents, I do not think it's good policy to release their name. I did provide the name to George Bennett, but normally I don't provide the agent name and never on the Internet, unless the agent was using the investigation inappropriately, as Agent Mike Levin seemed to be doing in the Secret Service "Cybercrime Task Force" investigation of the alleged VoteHere hack, where they kept interviewing me and trying to get dirt on the leaker of the Diebold memos using VoteHere as an excuse.

One more note: When you turn materials over, it is because as a good citizen you have the obligation to allow that agency to determine if the information should be acted upon. After you turn over the materials you are not necessarily ever informed of anything further.

I have turned materials over to the FBI on financial fraud matters twice, and on voting machine related matters once, and have also turned materials over to the IRS, state attorney general, local police and local prosecutors on both financial fraud issues and voting machine issues. Therefore, I have some experience in how these things go.

Typically you never hear anything at all, and then sometimes a year later you find out someone was arrested.

Sometimes materials I've turned over resulted in convictions and sometimes the people did prison time. More often you never hear anything. Sometimes, as with the central tabulator access in Riverside County during the March 2004 election, the prosecutor announces loudly that "no wrongdoing was found." In that case, it should be noted, that not a single one of the eye witnesses was ever interviewed or even contacted at all by the prosecutor who was "investigating."

The reason I'm going into this here is that it's important to have realistic expectations.

I don't think "turning something over to the FBI" can be used to refute the silliness over at Kos. The raw data itself is on the web and on our site we name several of the precincts and voting machines. Anyone who can open an Excel file can verify that votes are time and date-stamped as being cast in the middle of the night two weeks before the election.

In fact, all of the points made in the article can be verified by anyone.

By the way, I posted at Kos that I disagree that we should listen only to scientists or turn things over to scientists and listen to no one else. I referred to that as "taking the blue pill." It is much healthier for citizens to look at information themselves and decide for themselves what they believe.

As I said there, nothing is more dangerous to opponents of true democracy than well informed citizens who think for themselves.

============

As for the question from BVAC:

I do not believe that the purpose of auditing is to uncover 2004 election fraud, not at this point. It is to protect the 2006 elections. Of course, what happened in 2004 and in other elections is highly relevant, because it can provide evidence.

When you get evidence you can get an audience for your findings. When you get evidence you can get media coverage. And when your evidence is sufficiently troubling, evidence can galvanize citizens, the press, and some local officials to enact changes that will improve election integrity.

The vote data, the official results reports, the voting system logs, the pollbooks, videotapes like Palm Beach citizen Echo Steiner got of the crime tape blocking citizen access to Palm Beach County Elections office, these things are evidence from 2004 that are still being used to effect change in Palm Beach County, fighting to reform that system and protect Election 2006.

As for Arthur Anderson, I am frustrated because I warned him that his system was likely to have a very high number of certain kinds of errors based on the audit I had already started on essentially the same system in Snohomish County WA. He knew since Feb. 2005 and has not taken adequate steps to improve things there. I asked him to set up a technical panel, and the citizens of Palm Beach helped make that happen. He did it, but put some clinkers (like Sequoia's Phil Foster) on the committee. Only after citizen outrage was Phil Foster made into a "nonvoting member." Foster was at one point indicted for bribery (see Chapter 8 of the Black Box Voting book, http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf ); his job is selling systems for Sequoia, and there's no way he belongs on that committee.

I noticed that Arthur Anderson was gaunt, appeared to be under stress. He is probably being whipsawed by the local power structure, which includes some sticky-fingered developers. He is African-American, and the racism in Florida is still brutal. My husband and I still don't travel together in Florida much, especially in the rural areas.

I'm not making excuses for Arthur Anderson. He isn't publicly championing reform the way we'd like to see. I'm just saying that I am certain that the political realities for Anderson are brutal and possibly downright threatening, on a number of fronts.

We don't know what maneuvering is really going on behind the scenes. I was amazed to see that Palm Beach County picked up my expenses for the trip, and I don't know who championed that, but someone made that happen.

Anderson has not terminated the IT guys that were there under LePore. At the meeting on Thursday night, it seemed as though a lawyer had instructed Jeff Darter not to speak on certain issues, which included not uttering a word in response to direct questions about replication testing for the 70,000 card stuck errors, and staying stonily silent in response to who had access to the machines.

(Note that I misspelled Darter's name in the original article. I wrote it as "Darden." He had his name sign partially blocked, and I misunderstood the name when they said it. When I saw his quote in the Sun Sentinel I realized I'd misspelled the name, sorry about that.)

"As for Arthur Anderson, I am frustrated because I warned him that his system was likely to have a very high number of certain kinds of errors based on the audit I had already started on essentially the same system in Snohomish County WA. He knew since Feb. 2005 and has not taken adequate steps to improve things there. I asked him to set up a technical panel, and the citizens of Palm Beach helped make that happen. He did it, but put some clinkers (like Sequoia's Phil Foster) on the committee. Only after citizen outrage was Phil Foster made into a "nonvoting member." Foster was at one point indicted for bribery (see Chapter 8 of the Black Box Voting book, http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf ); his job is selling systems for Sequoia, and there's no way he belongs on that committee. "

Thank you for clarifying this situation regarding Arthur Anderson. For some reason when I kept hearing Arthur I was reminded again of Arthur Anderson Consulting/ENRON (or the company they became.)

It is interesting what you say regarding KOS. Although if you follow what I have been speaking about, its not surprising because KOS is infiltrated by the neocons.

There are alot of people there who have a vested interest in election "fraud" or at the very least, do not have any desire to care about it. And when I say vested I mean they belong to the same mob in Florida.

When I bring up Florida, its important to note one thing: Florida has been under control of the same mob for many many years and this goes back over a decade.....at least. That is why I always reccomend to not turn it into "anyone" over there......where I usually mail evidence, or even have people send via fax & PO Box is the Washington FBI Headquarters.

Florida's division of law enforcement with integrity is a VERY small one......very small, because the same mob runs the state.

And finally I believe if it is declared Kerry won that election, you will see criminal convictions and write-ups added to the actual impeachment resolution. Cheney & so on will have election fraud added to their reasons for being impeached.

(#64): Some would say it's already been found, but it's like trying to nail Jello to the wall, with all the smokescreens and countermeasures that are being taken.

If the people of America had followed the lead of the people of The Ukraine, Kerry would've been sitting in The White House by now (which is not an idea that particularly thrills me, but it would've reflected the will of the people).

I wish Senator Kerry had followed through on his promise at the Democratic National Convention to count every vote. His lackluster performance after his "loss" confirmed my fears that he was not the best person we could have had as Democratic Nominee.

If you really want to SCREAM....... right after Anderson inched out LePore somehow with these voting machines even after she was counting her own election..... PBC kept her on as an "Election Inspector" (Election investigator) so she could fill out her time in order to collect her pension.

Arthur Anderson seems to drinking the Kool-Aid.

Using these machines in any more elections is like taking an overdose of heroine.....and knowing the ramifications and doing it anyway.....

Is AA a pusher????

If Anderson makes the voters of PBC use these machines..... according to "common law" he is committing a crime against his fellow man.

Please feel free to email me at SluggoJD at SBCGlobal dot net, if you would like a more detailed summary, links to proof of various things, etc. I can also send you the audio from the Randi Rhodes event so you can judge for yourself.

I get a lot of spam these days (gee, I wonder why lol) so please put something in the title of the email that I can recognize.

So, did Arthur Anderson give detailed explanations for his comment that the anomalies Bev Harris found, "can be explained"? How come we let these people off the hook, and the one who said "fine election"? If he doesn't have detailed explanations for Bev's findings, then he's in on it. Otherwise, he wouldn't have said there's "explanations".

Here is a "normal person"'s response:

Arthur Anderson: "I am very disturbed at Bev Harris's findings of 100,000 errors on Sequoia machines in one county. I cannot explain her findings until I actually look at the audit records, like she did."

Arthur Anderson said, "There are explanations for her findings..."

Then what are they???

Can someone figure out this error rate in one county, and extrapolate the same error rate (let's say 5% for example), and multiply it by all the Florida counties that used electronic voting machines? How many votes of ZERO integrity were there in Florida's 2004 election count??? If we use this method. They checked one county (right?) and found 100,000 errors. It's valid to use the error rate in this one county in a formula to apply to the whole state, since they probably are stonewalling releasing the audit records of all the other Florida county's for examination.

If this is the only detailed examination of audit records for county voting machines that occurred so far in Florida, the only thing we can assume is that there is a chance that this error ratio occurred throughout Florida. What else can we assume?

Does everyone realize that Bev Harris could've gotten these audit records, and there could've been a close to ZERO error percentage? I'm sure if that happened, the lead story in the MSM would be, "Watchdog Vote Group finds Florida 2004 election was accurate." It would be all over the news.

For Big Dan: Your comparison of a normal response to Bev Harris' findings, and Anderson's response, "There are explanations...," is right on. Another way to look at it is to look at the response in the Ukraine when election officials said, "There are explanations for the issues raised by Yushchenko's supporters..."

Response? 200,000 people massed in the streets in frigid weather for three nights. Response? Three days of New York Times front-page headlines about fraud. Response? Colin Powell warns, "This will affect relations with the United States." Response? A new election ordered by the Supreme Court.

"There are explanations..." really translates as, "If the media pick up on this, we'll have to make something up to satisfy them. If the media ignore Bev Harris, we'll let sleeping dogs lie."

I know I'm harping on this, but picture YOURSELF...if Bev Harris showed you her audit results of 100,000 errors. YOU would say, "Oh, my God! This is unbelievable!" You wouldn't say, "This can be explained." Don't let this slide by us.

FWIW --- the error rate (if you count "stuck card" as an error) is about 20 percent.

The "stuck card" error is more troubling than it sounds. It may be nothing but it MUST be replicated and they don't seem to want to do that. There are three things that make it very concerning:

1) It happens after the voter is authenticated, ballot is called up, JUST AS the vote is being recorded

2) It doesn't happen in the L&A test.

3) In Snohomish County Washington, another area that had a high rate of a similar error, it turns out to correlate very closely with the card encoder machine used. Also, the error in Snohomish County had some strong demographic patterns --- crazily discrepant instances on the Indian reservation in Snohomish County, for example.

I was concerned about the lack of errors in the L&A test vs. the huge number of "stuck card" errors on Election Day. Bob Terwilliger of Snohomish County explained his similar error (which goes by "voter card removed") as voter error. However, in the L&A tests on Sequoia equipment that I've witnessed, regular people --- i.e. "voters" were inserting votes into the machines using a prepared script. So that doesn't seem to hold water.

My initial concern was that a percentage of the votes were being re-defined before recording them, with "stuck card" being an extraneous error message that accompanied that.

I think there's a good chance that the "stuck card" message isn't serious, but I also notice that the one factor that clearly correlated with the similar error in Snohomish --- the specific card encoder machine that loaded the input onto the voter card --- was one for which the Palm Beach reports ommitted all information.

They need to replicate the error in a controlled setting with the public watching. If they don't, we need to find a way to make that happen.

and yes, the examples of normal official responses vs. the actual is stunning.

If you have 70,000 "card stuck" errors that take place on election day but not on the L&A test why wouldn't you, as the supervisor of elections, want to get to the bottom of it? Out of every hundred votes on Election Day there were an average of 12, sometimes as many as 40 "stuck card" errors. During the L&A test, about 60,000 votes were cast and there were only a handful of "stuck card" errors --- fewer than 100. I have to look at the figures, but I'm thinking it was fewer than 50, or even less than that. Way out of whack with Election Day error rates.

If you have clear date-stamps of votes which are the wrong day, you should call in an independent forensic examiner. The fact that he just asked his IT guys --- who were the guys who were on the inside at the time the wrong-date voting occurred, and that he asks the vendor --- who hasn't given any explanation --- does not look good.

I love the word replacement on "we had a fine election." (We had a potato election). Means nothing. You had an election where not a single poll tape was signed by even one poll worker, with 100,000 errors on the logs.

Bev Harris is a down to earth honesty seeker who has been buffeted by dishonest and/or incompetent election officials but has not caved in.

In one court case she and Jim March, a republican, won, says:

1) The judgment of the court says "the the entry of the ... Permanent Injunction" (page 6, emphasis added).

2) "On or before January 14, 2005, counsel for the Qui Tams [Bev and Jim] shall submit to counsel for Diebold a request for payment of the Qui Tams' expenses, costs and attorneys' fees pursuant to Government Code §12652(g)(8) and supporting materials." (page 3)

3) "Amount of Payment: DESI[Diebold Election Systems, Inc.] will pay a total of TWO MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS ($2,600,000)" (p. 6).

At last, my grand conspiracy plan comes to fruition. All of the net lunatics I've spent the last year trying to rid the legit progressive community of have been relegated to the basement and you can only post your bogus shit on the bradblog.